Primary and secondary outcome measures The radiation doses were measured during ERCP using personal thermoluminescence dosimetry (TLD) badges on both sides of the mobile shield barrier (patient’s side: TLD1 and medical staff’s side: TLD2). The radiation doses were also measured on the outer surface of the thyroid shield of the endoscopist (TLD3), and on the chest area inside the protective apron of the endoscopist (TLD4) and the main assistant (TLD5). The TLD was changed and reported once every 3 months. The radiation dose measured by TLD badges were compared.

Results During the study period, a total of 128 ERCP procedures were performed. The mean fluoroscopy time per procedure was 244.9±257.0 s and the mean number of digital radiographs per procedure was 3.7±1.0. TLD1 (outside the barrier) had a mean radiation dose of 26.85±3.47 mSv and all the other TLDs (inside the barrier) had less than 1 mSv (p<0.001). In the post hoc analysis, the difference between TLD1 and others showed a statistical significance; however, there were no significant differences between the TLDs inside the barrier.

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Footnotes

Contributors BKS contributed to the concept and design of the study. He also drafted the initial manuscript. KHC critically reviewed the research protocol and contributed to analysing of data and writing of the manuscript. YSP and SBA contributed to the data interpretation and critically revised the manuscript. All authors were involved in editing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interests None declared.

Ethics approval The study protocol was approved by the institutional review board of Eulji General Hospital (protocol number: EMCIRB 2017-07-013).

Data sharing statement All available data can be obtained from the corresponding author.

Patient consent for publication Not required.

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.